First Manchester

[WhiteVanMan]

RE: First Manchester

(29/09/2016 19:33)Dentonian Wrote:  I was not aware 40324/5 & 50236 had left Manchester, but these and 40321/2 are hardly in the first flush of youth. Indeed, three of them are too old for tenders. Also, its some months since 63096-105 left and they could argue that 20 buses out of the fleet has been matched by the 20 for Vantage - noting that V1 & V2 replaced a number of "conventional" services and service cuts elsewhere across the county should be taken into account as well. The main problem is the lack of replacement for buses over 16 years old ie Citaroes and B7TLs at Bury and Oldham; Presidents at Rusholme (albeit that depot has very little in the way of TFGM tenders) and a few other bits and bobs at Tameside. Of course, it might be that First are planning further service cuts in January or April 2017 to make these redundant anyway......

There is a photo of 40324 in Camborne on Flickr.

I fully agree with you regarding Citaro's, about half of which are withdrawn. It was rumoured a couple of years ago that the Citaro's were to be replaced by StreetLite Max, but nothing came of it!, and now that First appears to be moving away from wrightbus towards ADL, It would be nice to see them replaced by Enviro 200MMC's.

As for the B7TL's at Bury, I find them to still be good buses, especially the ones on the 471.